Monday, July 20, 2009

Re: [lpanarchists] Re: Bait and Switch

Less, your input is always welcome and invariably valuable. That's a very interesting anecdote about Evers -- who (perhaps with others like Franzi, Blumert, Weber, Costello, Rohrabacher, maybe Garris) shows that the road between anarchism and smallarchism runs both ways.

LA) the minarchists at the time opposed taxation and supported the unlimited right of secession (LA

I'm still waiting for somebody to explain how this makes them any different from anarchists. My essay on that remains here. Do you agree with those who claim that the Pledge requires LP members to oppose the state having any non-voluntary authority, and can you explain why such people think that this would not be a pledge for anarchism? If you can opt out of it, it just ain't a state.

In my decade of involvement in the LP, I can't recall Browne being quoted as advocating anarchism. The most I've heard is that he thought it unfortunate that we have no prospect of finding "a way to finance government without taxes or a way to assure our safety without any government". Well, heck, by that feeble standard, you may as well count me as an anarchist too. I find the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics unfortunate, but that doesn't make me an advocate of building perpetual motion machines. I wish that the bad guys always lost and every child had a pony, but I don't let my fantasies dictate the content of my political philosophy.

I'm not sure when I predicted you'd fail to update the Dallas Accord in Denver. In fact, I don't know that you disagree with the Denver Accord that I proposed there. Whether or not any LP radicals signed on to it, the Denver delegates could be interpreted as having ratified it, and at least one radical leader on PlatCom (Susan) is now sounding like she is willing to live with it.